SATA loses €12 million a year from public service

The airline group SATA’s public transport air service between mainland Portugal and the islands of the Azores – subsidised for local residents – is losing around €12 million per annum.

In an interview with the business daily Negócios, the airline’s CEO Tiago Santos admitted that this summer will be different from last year with limits on aircraft numbers (one less plane) but not limits on flights with the company focus on links to mainland Portugal while scrapping other routes that weren’t profitable such as Bilbão and Milan.

Instead, SATA – the group which operates Azores Airlines, which has been restructured in preparation for sale to the consortium Atlantic Connect Group – will beef up routes between Porto and the island of Terceira and Ponta Delgada and Lisbon.

When asked if the decision to strengthen the connection to the mainland was due to Ryanair’s decision to end services to the Azores, Tiago Santos admitted that the group “had already anticipated some opportunities.”

“Being a regional public company, owned by the Regional Government, our mission is to ensure that we are at the service of the people. Therefore, in our operational plan we were calculating” the departure of the “low-cost” airline, he confessed.

And despite guaranteeing that Azores Airlines has been making good connections, the CEO says that “an interesting process is happening at Air Açores” through “coordination with the municipal councils to gain in-depth knowledge of events throughout the year” in order to strengthen connections in anticipation. “We want to ensure better coordination with the needs of each island, for an operation adapted to their needs,” he said.

Source: Negócios; Credit: SATA Azores Airlines